Training & Thoughts

Fun training session this week. We’ve spent a lot of time this month trying to get everyone to pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses so we have things to work on over the winter. So far everyone has something different to work on! This week was our “test week” on big spacey courses, getting the dogs to drive down a long line of jumps. Everyone did well, including Dylan. We’re just having fun at the moment.

Did some contact run throughs as well, I haven’t done any full equipment with him for three weeks, just working on end-position games. We did 2 full dogwalks at the end of the class which were beautiful, I’m excited to see if they hold up in competition!

We also got to chatting about what kind of requirements clubs and training classes should have for new people wanting to join. I think the final agreement was that a solid recall is absolutely necessary, but other than that the dog should have a willingness to work and the handler should have some way of reinforcing the correct behaviour. If you’ve got those three things, you can take any dog to agility or flyball (or whatever) and start work. If you don’t, you need to go away and make sure you have those three things under your belt first!

Also, dogs shouldn’t be fat.